East Meadow's rally falls short

The No. 4 East Meadow girls’ soccer team made a strong push in the final minutes of its Nassau AA quarterfinals matchup against No. 5 Syosset, but in the end, came up just short of preserving its season.

Oct. 25 proved to be the final game of 2016 for the Lady Jets, as they fell by a 2-1 final in front of their home crowd.

After being held scoreless for nearly 75 minutes, junior Vittoria Fuduli finally got East Meadow on the board, converting a goal off a free kick attempt. The Lady Jets had multiple opportunities to tie the game afterwards during the contest’s final five minutes, but failed to complete the comeback. 

“It was too little, too late,” East Meadow coach Adam Hananel said. 

While the Lady Jets did their damage late in the contest, the Lady Braves struck early. Rachel Rosenberg bended a corner kick into East Meadow’s net just 90 seconds into the game, giving Syosset a quick lead. 

“We started off the game with a killer just a minute and a half in,” Hananel said. “That was unfortunate.”

While boasting one of the conference’s better defenses, generating offense proved to be a struggle at times this season for the Lady Jets. Against the Lady Braves, the club’s scoring issues were once again present. During the first half and most of the second half, East Meadow struggled to create offensive opportunities, and had trouble navigating around Syosset’s stingy midfield defense. 

“We’ve struggled all year to score goals,” Hananel said. “We don’t really have that striker. We haven’t been giving up too many goals, but we haven’t been scoring them. That’s a problem when you don’t have the player who is hungry to put the ball in the net.”

Senior Lauryn Shin has proven to be a more than capable striker for the Lady Braves this season, and provided a critical goal in this game’s second half. With 27:43 left in regulation time, Shin buried her eighth goal of the fall, to put the Lady Jets in a challenging two-goal hole. 

Following the goal, a now more aggressive East Meadow squad began to see a gradual increase in its number of scoring chances. With 2:54 remaining, Fuduli just missed the net on a shot from a quality scoring location. The Lady Jets also failed to convert on a free kick opportunity inside the last two minutes. 

East Meadow ended its season on a disappointing note, but still came away with six wins this fall. Now the goal for 2017 will be developing offensive pieces to go along with the squad’s young and impressive defensive unit.

“Our backline was four sophomores and a ninth grader in goal. I’d like to think that this was a valuable experience for them,” Hananel said. “Hopefully we can find a couple of kids to start to attack a little more, and in the future we will be in a good place.”